Shortcomings of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act was first enacted back in 2009 by the Parliament of India. Like most other acts that were enacted, this act which comes under RTE has met it’s own set of criticisms. The act aimed at providing a better education to all children especially the ones who misses out because their parents aren’t able to afford their children’s tuition fees. The private schools also had to reserve 25% of their seats for the disadvantaged groups and weaker sections.

Another reason for the enactment of the act was providing equal opportunities to all children. Many students missed out on receiving a proper elementary education due to lack of infrastructure and lack of schools altogether. In many cases, students have to walk for miles to reach school.

Below are some reasons why the Act failed to achieve the desired results.

Quality of Education

Though the education for children was made compulsory through this act, but the Government failed at the most important area – providing a quality education. The quality of education has fallen way below in the last couple of decades. There are various factors that are responsible.

Some of the most important factors are lack of infrastructure, shortage of teachers and politics. Politics have crept into all the Government systems. It has also come to light that undeserving people who are well connected with top political leaders often get jobs as a school teacher. This approach has caused further setback in improving the quality of education in India.

One of the other reasons for the declining quality of education is lack of evaluation for teachers. Students are put through rigorous tests which often causes a lot of stress, but when it comes to teachers (especially at Government schools) , there are hardly any measures taken up to measure their efficiency as a teacher. The fact that a Government school teacher will not lose their job (because it’s a Government job) creates further problems.

Lack of Awareness

One of the funny things with the Indian Government is that everything’s in place but people hardly know about it. The Government never takes any initiative for increasing awareness among the citizens.

The RTE act is aimed at providing a quality education to children especially disadvantaged and handicapped children. However, the act has failed miserably to achieve that result.

In some cases, the benefits were simply not available. For example, a parent whose son had been promoted to class III was looking for benefits under the RTE act and the school simply informed that the claim was only valid for LKG students. Also in another case, a parent could not admit their son in the same school for higher classes under the RTE act because the school was more than 3km from their residence.

Complicated Public – Private Partnership

The RTE act made it mandatory for private schools to reserve 25% of their seats for the weaker children. However, such partnerships required a lot of complicated paperwork. This approach was met with huge criticism. The Government also hadn’t made enough fund allocation for the private schools for taking on these children.

The Act enables students to enroll without any certification, but the private schools have asked for several documents including the family income papers for their admission. This has led to even further controversies.

Only time will tell, how the Government moves forward and implements a better use of the Act.